They could be but it's clear that he is a passenger on the line which should be expected. And his horrid defensive play is costing them a lot of goals. And not just as part of the problem on a broken down coverage but THE problem on the play.

My only real intent is to troll RD right back.

Hodgson is a good young player. But a young player that has the sort of deficiencies that cause coaches and organizations to look critically at once the luster of the fine vision and offensive play wears off. Bad defensive centers simply don't stick around on good teams unless they are true blue super star and even then they have to tend to be competent on the defensive end of things for the team to be successful. Especially undersized ones who have a bit of trouble skating. Right now he simply isn't very good defensively and is getting directly victimized on a routine basis. A lot of it doesn't have to do with how he thinks the game defensively but rather the inability to get to where he needs to be. His acceleration remains an issue and he has a tendency to get caught standing still which exacerbates his problem with getting up to speed (See the Ward goal in the Caps-Sabres game for example).

I agree with the assessment that it really doesn't matter, if Kassian develops then the canucks got what they needed and they got it by using something they didn't.

tantalum wrote:Hodgson is a good young player. But a young player that has the sort of deficiencies that cause coaches and organizations to look critically at once the luster of the fine vision and offensive play wears off. Bad defensive centers simply don't stick around on good teams unless they are true blue super star and even then they have to tend to be competent on the defensive end of things for the team to be successful. Especially undersized ones who have a bit of trouble skating. Right now he simply isn't very good defensively and is getting directly victimized on a routine basis. A lot of it doesn't have to do with how he thinks the game defensively but rather the inability to get to where he needs to be. His acceleration remains an issue and he has a tendency to get caught standing still which exacerbates his problem with getting up to speed (See the Ward goal in the Caps-Sabres game for example).

I don't disagree. Anyone who saw him play last year would know that he's not ready for the first line duty that he's getting. Not surprised at all that he's getting lit up.

That said his largest detractors do seem to be bitter Canuck fans (most of whom have only seen bits and pieces of his games) piling on a player traded from their favorite team. Sabers fans and more importantly the sabers coaching staff seem to be quite happy with what they got.

On a side note Hodgson is still a regular on the Sabers Pk and his numbers seem fine, though the sample size is still quite small.

I suggested the Canucks trade Hodgson before last season began, mostly because I didn't think he would be good enough defensively to play on the 3rd line and not good enough to displace the top two centres on the team.

Having watched a few Sabres games closely, I've yet to see any improvement from Cody in his own end.

He's often tentative, soft on puck battles, weak stick checks and slow to loose pucks. It's still early to read too much into face-off stats but so far he's regressed in the circle.

Hodgson will score points but he has a long way to go before he's considered a two-way player.

It'll be interesting to see how high his offensive ceiling is because he has to score at a considerable clip to justify playing big minutes and in all three zones unless he makes big strides defensively.

JelloPuddingPop wrote:Yup, if he were still a Canuck - he'd be leading us in scoring... and would be the only player at a point-per-game clip. Doing all this with a better plus/minus than one of our best D - Dan Hamhuis.

Potatoe1 wrote:I don't disagree. Anyone who saw him play last year would know that he's not ready for the first line duty that he's getting. Not surprised at all that he's getting lit up.

That said his largest detractors do seem to be bitter Canuck fans (most of whom have only seen bits and pieces of his games) piling on a player traded from their favorite team. Sabers fans and more importantly the sabers coaching staff seem to be quite happy with what they got.

On a side note Hodgson is still a regular on the Sabers Pk and his numbers seem fine, though the sample size is still quite small.

There are folks who want to carp about trading CoHo, especially now that Kes is still out.

But realistically, there was no other good option for GMMG, and he got a good strong winger for him.

Had we kept CoHo, he would be playing 3rd line (when Sedin & Kes are playing) and be squeezed for minutes.There would likely be no place for Schroeder, he would still be stifled in the AHL.

Gillis figured that by trading CoHo, he would open up a spot for J.S., and probably felt that Schroeder had better 2-way potential than CoHo.Throw in the extra drama from CoHo's dad & agent, and it becomes pretty easy to see why it happened as it did.